2nd SOUTHEAST ASIA FORUM | Richard Kriesche

In Capital + Code (2007), Richard Kriesche combines two instruments of the financial age — Google, today’s omnipresent search engine, and Teletrader, a specialised software popularly employed by financial industry insiders. Over the course of an exhibition, visitors ‘traded’ information through search questions on Google involving different combinations of five essentially relevant terms— ‘capital’, ‘freedom’, ‘work’, ‘art’, and ‘society’. Teletrader Professional captured fluctuations of constantly changing graphs based on these responses. This convergence in real time was visualised in the form of stock market charts, which Kriesche views as an iconic symbol of the 21st century, reflecting social realities that are constructed through forces related to financial hegemony. This body of work represents Kriesche’s views on changed meanings of art as a result of global capitalism and developments in digital and information technology. by Nadia Ng